Cain

Chapter 8

In an instant, the same cain who had just left sodom, travelling along proper roads, was suddenly transported to the sinai desert where, to his great surprise, he found himself in the midst of a multitude of thousands all encamped at the foot of a mountain. He had no idea who they were, nor where they had come from, nor where they were going. If he were to ask any of the people next to him, he would immediately betray the fact that he was a stranger, and that might bring him all kinds of embarrassments and problems. Keeping prudently on the back foot, therefore, he decided to call himself neither cain nor abel this time, just in case the devil should decide to stir things up and introduce someone who had heard tell of that tale of two brothers and who might then start asking awkward questions. It would be best to keep eyes and ears open and to draw his own conclusions. One thing was certain, the name of moses was on everyone's lips, some uttered it in a tone of ancient veneration, but most did so with a rather more contemporary note of impatience. They were the ones who kept asking, Where is moses, he went up to the mountain to speak to the lord forty days and forty nights ago, and we have received neither word nor command from him since, the lord has obviously abandoned his people and wants nothing more to do with us. The road to self-deception is narrow to begin with, but there's always someone ready to broaden it out, for as the proverb says, self-deception is like eating or scratching, it's all a matter of beginning. Along with those waiting for moses' return from mount sinai was a brother of his called aaron, who had been appointed high priest during the time of the israelites' captivity in egypt. The more impatient among them addressed themselves to him, saying, Since we do not know what has happened to moses, why don't you make us some gods to guide us, and aaron, who was, it would seem, neither a model of steadfastness nor very brave, instead of refusing point-blank, said, If that's what you want, take the gold earrings from your wives and sons and daughters and bring them here. They did as he asked, and he then melted the gold, poured it into a mould, cast it and made of it a golden calf. Apparently pleased with his work and oblivious to the serious confusion he was about to create around that future object of worship, namely, was it the lord himself or a calf replacing him, he announced, Tomorrow we will hold a feast in honour of the lord. Cain heard all this and, piecing together odd words, scraps of dialogue, snatches of opinion, he began to form an idea, not just about what was happening at that moment, but about what had gone on before. He was greatly helped in this by conversations overheard in a tent used as a dormitory for soldiers, those without families of their own. Unable to think of anything better, Cain had told them that his name was noah, and he was made welcome and invited to join in their conversations, for jews have always been a talkative people. The following morning, a rumour spread that moses was finally coming down from mount sinai and that joshua, his aide and the israelites' military commander, had gone to meet him. When joshua heard the shouts of the people, he said to moses, There is a noise of war in the camp, What you hear, said moses, are not the happy songs of victory or the sad songs of defeat, it is merely the sound of people singing. Little did he know what awaited him. When he entered the camp, the first thing he saw was the golden calf and the people dancing round it. He seized the calf, smashed it into pieces and ground it to powder, then, turning to aaron, he asked, What did this people do to you that you allowed them to commit so great a sin, and aaron, who, for all his faults, knew the world in which he lived, replied, Do not be angry with me, for you know that these people are set on mischief, it was their idea, they wanted other gods because they no longer believed that you would return, and they would probably have killed me if I had refused to do as they asked. Then moses stood at the gate of the camp and cried, Whoever is on the lord's side let him come to me. All the tribe of levi gathered around him, and moses proclaimed, Thus says the lord god of israel, take up your swords, return to the camp and go from door to door killing your brother, your friend, your neighbour. And in this way nearly three thousand men died. And the blood ran between the tents like a flood that had sprung up from the earth, as if the earth itself were bleeding, everywhere lay bodies cleaved in two, with throats slit or guts hanging out, and so loud were the screams of the women and children that they must have reached the top of mount sinai where the lord would be rejoicing in his revenge. Cain could barely believe what he was seeing. Burning sodom and gomorrah to the ground had evidently not been enough for the lord, for here, at the foot of mount sinai, was clear, irrefutable proof of his wickedness, three thousand men killed simply because he was angered by the creation of a supposed rival in the form of a golden calf. I killed one brother and the lord punished me, who, I would like to know, is going to punish the lord for all these deaths, thought cain, lucifer was quite right when he rebelled against god, and those who say he did so out of envy are wrong, he simply recognised god's evil nature. Some of the gold dust blown by the wind stained cain's hands. He washed them in a puddle as if ritually shaking from his feet the dust of a place where he had been ill received, then he climbed on to his donkey and left. A dark cloud hung over mount sinai, where the lord sat.

For reasons it is not in our power to explain, mere repeaters as we are of ancient stories, constantly wavering between the most ingenuous credulity and the most resolute scepticism, cain found himself plunged into what we can, without exaggeration, call a tempest, a calendric cyclone, a temporal hurricane. During the few days following the episode of the golden calf and its brief existence, his ever- changing presents followed one upon another with incredible rapidity, emerging from the void and hurling themselves back into the void in the form of random, disparate images, with no continuity or connection between them, at times showing what appeared to be the battles of a never-ending war whose first cause no one could remember, at others revealing a kind of grotesque and invariably violent farce, a sort of on-going grand guignol, harsh, discordant and obsessive. One of these images, the most enigmatic and fleeting of all, set before his eyes a vast expanse of water where one could see nothing as far as the horizon, not even an island or a sailing boat with its fishermen and their nets. Water, water everywhere, nothing but water covering the earth. Obviously, cain could not have been an eye-witness to all of these stories, and some, whether true or not, came to him via the well-known route of hearing a story from someone who had heard it from someone else who had, in turn, told someone else. One example was the scandalous case of lot and his daughters. When sodom and gomorrah were destroyed, lot was afraid to go on living in the nearby town of zoar and decided to seek shelter in a cave in the mountains. One day, his eldest daughter said to his younger daughter, Our father is old, one day he will die, and there is no man on the earth to marry us, come, let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him so that he may give us descendants. And so it was, and lot did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed, and the same thing happened with his younger daughter on the following night, for he was so old and drunk that, again, he did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed. The two sisters duly became pregnant, but when this story was told to cain, that great expert on erections and ejaculations, as lilith, his first and so far only lover, would happily confirm, he said, Any man who was so drunk that he didn't even know what was going on wouldn't even be able to get it up, and if he couldn't get it up, then no penetration could take place and no engendering either. We should not be surprised by the fact that in the ancient societies he had created, the lord should accept incest as an everyday occurrence not deserving of punishment, for nature then lacked any moral code and was concerned only with the propagation of the species, whether driven by natural urges, mere lust or, as people will say later on, simply doing what comes naturally. The lord himself had said, Go forth and multiply, and he put no limits or restrictions on that injunction, nor on who one should or shouldn't go with. It's possible, although this is only a working hypothesis, that the lord's liberality in the matter of making babies had to do with the need to replace the considerable losses suffered, in the way of dead and wounded, by his and other people's armies, as we have already seen and will doubtless continue to see. We need only recall what happened within sight of mount sinai and the column of smoke that was the lord, the erotic zeal with which, that same night, once the survivors had dried their tears, they hurriedly did their best to engender new combatants who would one day wield the ownerless swords and slit the throats of the children of those who had just vanquished them. Look at what happened to the midianites. In the great lottery of war, it chanced that they defeated the israelites, who, in the past, it must be said, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, often faced defeat. This rankled with the lord, like a stone in his shoe, and he said to moses, You should take vengeance for the israelites on the midianites and then, prepare yourself, for afterwards you will be gathered unto your people. Swallowing the unpleasant news about his own imminent demise, moses ordered each of the twelve tribes of israel to provide one thousand men for the war and thus raised an army of twelve thousand soldiers, who destroyed the midianites, not one of whom escaped with his life. Among the dead were the kings of midian, namely evi, rekem, zur, hur and reba, for kings then used to have strange names, rather than being called joao or afonso or manuel, sancho or pedro. As for the women and children, the israelites took them captive, as well as seizing their cattle, sheep, and all their other goods and chattels. They presented this booty to moses and to the priest eleazar and to the congregation of the children of israel, who were encamped on the plains of moab, by the river jordan, near jericho, toponymic details which we give here merely to show that we have invented nothing. On learning the outcome of the battle, moses was angry and he demanded of the soldiers entering the encampment, Why did you not also kill the women who caused the israelites to trespass against the lord and worship instead the god baal, thus causing a plague among the people of the lord, I order you, therefore, to go back and kill every male child and every woman who has lain with a man, and as for the female children and those women who have not yet lain with a man, you may keep them for yourselves. None of this surprised cain. What was new to him was the sharing out of the spoils, which we set down here as an indispensable record of the customs of the day, with apologies to the reader for an excess of detail for which we are not responsible. This is what the lord said to moses, You and the priest eleazar and the chief fathers of the congregation take the sum of the spoils that were taken, both of men and of beasts, and divide them into two parts, half for the soldiers who fought in the battle and the other half for the congregation. From the soldiers' half you will take as a tribute to the lord one soul of every five hundred, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep. Of the children of israel's half you will take one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep, and give them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. Moses did as the lord commanded. And the booty that the israelite soldiers took was six hundred and seventy- five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses and thirty-two thousand women who had not lain with men. And the half corresponding to the soldiers who had gone into battle was, therefore, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred sheep, of which the lord's tribute was six hundred and seventy-five, thirty-six thousand oxen, of which the lord's tribute was seventy-two, thirty thousand five hundred asses, of which the lord's tribute was sixty-one, and sixteen thousand people, of which the lord's tribute was thirty-two. The other half, which moses gave to the israelites, consisted also of three hundred and thirty- seven thousand five hundred sheep, thirty-six thousand oxen, thirty thousand five hundred asses and sixteen thousand women who had not lain with men. Of that half, moses took one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, and just as the lord commanded, he gave them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. But this was not all. In gratitude to the lord for having saved their lives, for none of them had died in the battle, the soldiers, through the intermediary of their commanding officers, offered up to the lord the gold they had found during the sack of the town. Those bracelets, bangles, rings, earrings and necklaces weighed in at some three hundred and seventy pounds. As has been amply demonstrated, as well as being naturally gifted with the brain of a book-keeper and being very quick at mental arithmetic too, the lord is also what one can only describe as very rich. Still astonished by the abundance of cattle, slave-women and gold, the fruits of the battle against the midianites, cain thought, War is obviously very good business indeed, perhaps the best of all, to judge by the ease with which, in an instant, one can acquire thousands and thousands of oxen, sheep, asses and women, this lord will one day be known as the god of war, I can see no other use for him, thought cain, and he was right. It is quite possible that the pact that some say exists between god and men contains only two articles, namely, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. One thing is sure, things have changed a lot. Once, the lord would appear to us in person, in the flesh so to speak, and even took a certain satisfaction in showing himself to the world, just ask adam and eve, who benefitted from his presence, or ask cain, although that was in less fortunate circumstances, we refer, of course, to the murder of abel, when there was little cause for contentment. Now, though, the lord conceals himself in columns of smoke, as if he preferred not to be seen. As mere observers of events, we are of the view that he feels ashamed of some of his less palatable actions, for example, those innocent children in sodom devoured by his divine fire.